Interesting we can't ask those that look different from us where they are from, but are we are suppose to fawn all over their cultures as superior to our own or have hand outs dug out our rear ends to lavish all over them.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

For obvious and justifiable reasons, a number of Evangelical leaders often cast a suspicious gaze at Mormon figures in American public life. After all, though the two systems of belief share a similar vocabulary at certain points and often both hold to traditionalist assumptions regarding social morality, these perspectives differ considerably regarding the nature of God as well as the origins and destiny of man.

However, the least that the orthodox Christian commenting on public affairs ought to do is to try and maintain some kind of consistent policy towards those advocating what could be considered a doctrinally questionable religious viewpoint. It seems that instead of basing such characterizations solely upon the beliefs such voices claim must take precedence above all other considerations, such analysis is often skewered in favor of those most likely to ensure that the particular pundit in question can retain a position as the water carrier of the entrenched political establishment.

For example, in his 9/16/11 commentary transcript, Cal Thomas mentions Rick Perry presenting his testimony before an audience at Liberty University. Thomas closes his brief analysis by concluding Perry's testimony isn't all that important beyond its existential value as it is more important how one's faith works itself out in a President's policies. Thomas astutely observers that believers have had the wool pulled over our eyes numerous times in terms of politicians saying one thing and doing another.

Thomas concludes, "But if Mitt Romney, a Mormon turns out to be better to defeat the President and advance policies with which most Evangelicals agree, then he should be the one the President's opponents get behind."

From the standpoint of an objective political calculation, Thomas is correct. However, since the publication of "Blinded By Might: Why The Religious Right Can't Save America" in which he and co-author Ed Dobson heaped criticism upon the Religious Right by exposing the shortcomings of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority (an organization both men saw from the inside), Thomas has gone out of his way to downplay the role conservative Christians ought to play in politics.

Since Thomas's coauthor went from a standpoint of being apolitical to losing his marbles by taking on the less than kept grooming habits of an Old Testament prophet insisting that the Scriptures insist that the only properly cast ballot had to be for Barack Obama, you'd think Thomas might have realized he might have been duped into castigating conservative Christians into a state of hyperpious quietism. However, it seems Thomas continues advocating this perspective selectively whenever he thinks doing so might win him a few scraps of dwindling recognition from media and Republican elites.

For whereas we are suppose to gleefully march behind Romney (Thomas no doubt in part so he can ask the former Massachusetts governor who does the candidate's cranial dye job), his tone regarding Glenn Beck, another prominent Mormon, is markedly different.

In the transcript of the 4/11/11 Cal Thomas commentary, the columnist warns, "Beck is not only a Mormon, he frequently drifts into universalism." Writing in particular to the news of Beck's ouster from Fox News, Thomas muses, "They come and they go in this business...and eventually flame out..Put not your trust in princes and kings. That goes for show hosts, too."

This from the very same media figure that just a few paragraphs back was getting all aboard the Romney express.

Evangelicals do need to be cautious regarding Mormon theology. For example, in his book "The Real America: Early Writings From The Heart & Heartland", Beck said a number of things that would make a true believer's hair stand on with goosebumps had it come from the lips of anyone else.

In one passage, Beck said that he thought the Trinity, the idea that the Godhead is composed of the three distinct personages of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, was laughable and that there was no such thing as Hell.

Which brings us to another point. It is interesting how Beck can ridicule the most profound belied and mystery of the greatest number of Christians in the world (that being those that grant assent to the ecumenical creeds such as the Nicene) but the entire Republican Party stands ready to burn at the stake a single pastor that dared enunciate as to why he would not be endorsing Mitt Romney for the nomination.

What the pastor said was technically correct. If Americans inclined themselves a bit more towards religious reflection, they would know that the word "cult" does not necessarily denote a sect that ultimately meets with a violent end as a result of authoritarian leadership as in the cases of Johnstown, Heaven's Gate, and the Branch Davidians.

A cult can be any group that splits off from one of the larger world religions and is distinct from the parental creed it has separated itself from by either renouncing the more orthodox formulations of a doctrine or by promulgating a new dogma or revelation that the more orthodox adherents of the larger faith cannot embrace in good conscience.

For example, Mormonism holds that God was once a man not all that different than the rest of us who worked his way up to that status and that we too can also one day become deities over our own little planets as well. Traditional Christianity holds to the idea, that Beck snidely derided, that God exists externally from everlasting to everlasting in the form of three distinct unified persons. God is complete in Himself and does not grow or learn over time as claimed by the Later Day Saints.

The prominence played by Mormonism in the 2012 election cycle has presented American Christians in general and Evangelicals in particular with a unique set of challenges. On the one hand, believers are obligated by Scripture to speak in a firm but loving manner in defense of their own beliefs while pointing out distinctively where that faith is incompatible with Mormonism. And on the other, in a constitutional republic recognizing the freedom of religion we each posses as individuals created in the image of God, Mormon citizens have every right to engage in the same forms of civic participation that all Americans enjoy and sense a profound duty towards.

In the 9/20/11 issues of Sojourners magazine is an advertisement for the 2012 Gladdening Light Symposium featuring Jesus Seminar scholar John Dominic Crossan. Part of the ad copy reads, "Feed the soul, savor the beauty, and experience the communion love of Agape in the Gladdening Light of God."

However, if Crossan is being heralded as what in show business and prize fights circles is called the main event, those in attendance will have very little to ultimately be glad about. Given the name of the symposium, the event frankly borders on false advertising.

Anyone that has subscribed to the History Channel or A&E before both networks went nearly all alien autopsy and rummage sales has no doubt seen Crossan. He is a talking head that use to get dragged out around Christmas and Easter time for those specials that posture as giving viewers the latest dirt on the events of the Bible being bantered about in the halls of respectable academia.

However, seldom do these programs confirm the accuracy of the Biblical accounts. Rather, the intended purpose is often to heap as much skepticism upon these narratives as possible.

Crossan’s ticket to never picking up a bar tab (or in this case midwinter accommodations in sunny Florida) is that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. Instead, Crossan believes Christ’s body was instead most likely eaten by dogs.

But rather than surrendering to a life as a squeegee man if religion is such a colossal waste of time, Crossan has taken up the mission of destroying other people’s faith as well. It’s just that Crossan continues to hold onto Christian terminology to accomplish this task. And it’s quite the incentive to keep at it that mildly entertaining eccentric skeptics are invited on midwinter Florida speaking tours and squeegee men are not.

Over the centuries, most have been drawn to Christianity as a result of its hope and promise of a blissful afterlife at the conclusion of this so very brief existence of terrestrial mortality. Crossan’s vision of Christianity’s allure is markedly different.

On the surface, what Crossan and the Gladdening Light Foundation are calling for sounds quite a bit like Communism, but of a milksop variety lacking the backbone to do so without reference to God and along with the hopes that the religious buzzwords will draw in the easily duped.

The ad copy reads, “...Crossan’s vision of God’s longing for a just and loving community representative of all (‘loving thy neighbor as thyself’ from Leviticus and the Gospel of Mark).” The paragraph concludes that, along with Crossan, a number of whom couldn’t otherwise get real jobs such as a “community choreographer” will speak about “their own creative aspirations struggling for transformation beyond societies that marginalize the disenfranchised.”

This may need to be translated for those that don’t speak stoned hippy. What this really means is that your rights and property as an individual mean very little or even nothing.

It is only the group that counts since that is the only thing that lives on. In a materialistic universe without a Resurrection, we pass out of existence at death (or at best make a guest appearance as a garbled electronic voice phenomena on one of those cable TV spiritism shows that took the place of the kind programming Crossan used to be featured on when A&E and the Discovery Channel attempted to appeal to the educated).

"Struggling for transformation" is the new euphemism for the old revolutionary phrase "by any means necessary". For now, the saps at the Gladdening Light Symposium are so naive that they think you will be so dazzled by COMMUNITY choreography (must be something like a Glee cast dance number) and Cherokee story telling that you will gladly hand everything you have over to what the ideological forbearers of these sorts of activities use to call the vanguard of the proletariat.

Of course, they will skim some extra off the top for themselves. I'm sure John Dominic Crossan didn't come cheap and at least had his first class airfare provided while no doubt working into his lectures why the rest of us ought to flagellate ourselves over the developed world's carbon footprint.

This still doesn't answer the most important question. What will prevent the likes of those worked up into such a froth of imminent expectancy from turning violent when they discover you aren't quite as moved as they thought you would be by fancy footwork and the cute little parables many American Indians seem to have a knack for?

One should not try to deny that there will not be any bashing of Western civilization in general and America in particular at the symposium. This will be an automatic given.

This can be discerned from the phrase "societies that marginalize the disenfranchised". But is a symposium where "Pilgrims concerned with the plight of the world's people will gather for an entire weekend of vigorous discussion, enlightened teaching, and thoughtful reflection" where the attendees don't actually travel to assist the disenfranchised but rather to the state whose very name epitomizes delightful winter comfort and luxury really going to accomplish all that much?

About the closest any of the attendees will come to a Third Worlder is the picture of the African refugees placed in the left hand corner of the advertisement announcing the symposium. What this vigorous discussion, enlightened teaching, and thoughtful reflection will likely consist of is a bunch of moderately wealthy former hippies and their young adult children dreaming up additional ways to shame you out of your own money or how to swindle it away from you at the end of the taxman's gun if you aren't gullible enough to go along with the obsequious self-loathing.

I Corinthians 15:19 says in regards to the Resurrection, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." I Peter 1:16 assures, "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty." Any doubting this central teaching of the Christian message while continuing to employ the imagery and rhetoric of the faith is not out to instill hope but rather the most enslaving form of tyranny.